


BLACK GREEN BLUE

by Voiid_Vagabond (Saturn_the_Almighty)



Series: Borderline [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Character Study, FAHC, Fake AH Crew, Gen, Illustrations, Implied Borderline Personality Disorder, Knives, Not really explicitly mentioned but it's there, Origin Story, Pre-Fake AH Crew, Prequel, Present Tense, The Vagabond, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 12:19:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17898326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saturn_the_Almighty/pseuds/Voiid_Vagabond
Summary: The Vagabond is born exactly ninety-one days after Ryan Haywood's death.





	BLACK GREEN BLUE

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little drabble about the Vagabond before the Fakes. Sort of a prequel to another fic. Partially inspired by Sami Jen's heterochromia Vagabond. It's honestly a beautiful headcanon and I'm adopting it as my own, because, wow.

Ryan Haywood is dead. A car is pulled in a crumpled, smoking heap from the bottom of a ravine in Oregon. Ryan Haywood drove himself over the edge of that ravine and plummeted to his death. He was intoxicated and it was dark and wet. His death is not suspicious. It is just uncommon enough to be believable. His family does not grieve. They are in pieces over him. They are in pieces _because_ of him.

Exactly fifty-two days after Ryan Haywood's death, a man arrives in Los Santos. He only has a duffel bag with him, filled with clothes, an extra pair of shoes and an obscene amount of cash. He wanders around the city, appearing without purpose. He makes only three purchases that day. One, a tube of black hair dye from a beauty shop. Two, a bag of pickle potato chips from a convenience store. Three, the cheapest apartment available with a working lock. He sits in his bed that night with his back against the wall, shifting his eyes between the single window and the single door. In his hands is a dulled and worn kitchen knife. He does not sleep.

Seventy-one days after Ryan Haywood's death, the man who appeared in Los Santos has been living in his small apartment for nineteen days. His hair is black now. The roots are blonde because he does not know how to hide them. There are dark stains under his fingernails and on his palms. His white sink is now a dirty grey. It took him four tries to make his hair black. He is not happy. He is _incapable,_ he decides, of doing it right. His hands shake and he spits out curses under his breath as he saws through the locks of his too-long black hair with the dulled and worn kitchen knife. The hair falls to the floor and he stares at his reflection, his eyes ice cold--

Ice blue, green like moss. His eyes don't match. His mind doesn't match. His anger doesn't **match.** The mirror shatters beneath his fist. He sits down on the floor and picks out the pieces of glass in his knuckles. The black stains from the hair dye underneath his fingernails are stained red.

He does not sleep that night. His hair is uneven and his mind is not quiet. There is a thumping in the walls and he drowns it out with louder thumping, stabbing the dulled and worn kitchen knife into his wall over-- _thump_ and over-- _thump_ and over-- _thumpthumpthumpthumpthump thump thump_

_**thump** _

He is awoken in the middle of the night, ninety days after Ryan Haywood's death. He cannot breathe. His vision is blurred, smearing the streetlight outside the single window into an orange blob. He realizes they are tears long after they fall from his eyes, long after they dry in streaks on his cheeks. He dreamt of the color black. Of dark stains on his hands, of a room so dark that he cannot see the color staining the floor. He dreamt of warm, wet blackness in that dark room. Of dark, dark, dark. A gash across his arm, scratches on his legs, his neck, his face. There is pain and warmth that contradict and the knife drops from his hand and clatters to the floor. He remembers the dream and digs his fingernails into his palms.

His eyes do not match but they have seen all the same things.

In the morning, on the ninety-first day after Ryan Haywood's death, the Vagabond is born. He is abrasive and impulsive and his hair is black, but not at the roots. The Vagabond is anger that comes from nowhere. He is emptiness that comes from everywhere. He is perfection and desolation and the dulled and worn kitchen knife breaks inside the man he slides it into.

The Vagabond hides his bloody hands inside his denim jacket pockets and strolls down to the nearest weapons dealer. He buys himself as many knives as they have. They are shiny and sharp and there are seventeen of them. He pays for them in cash and the man behind the counter doesn't mind that the bills are smeared with blood. He can't afford to mind. After all, the man with blood on his fingers now has seventeen knives.

The Vagabond returns to his tiny apartment with a single window and a single door and tosses his jacket onto the bed. The seventeen knives inside spill out. One of them slides off the mattress and onto the floor. The Vagabond is glad he paid extra for individual sheathes.

He walks into his cramped bathroom with the sink stained grey. His eyes do not match, he knows, but he cannot see them. His mirror is gone. Shattered. There are still stray pieces of glass on the floor along with a few black hairs that never got swept up quite right. He glares down at the grimy tiles. He does not know if his roots are still blonde.

They are. So are his eyebrows, he realizes, when he holds up the small, cheap mirror to his face. He bought it at a convenience store, the same one where he goes to buy aspirin and whipped cream and pickle potato chips. His eyebrows are pale and thin and they _don't match his hair._ He walks down to the beauty store for more black hair dye and crinkles the receipt in his hand as he exits the store. 'Black brow mascara,' the receipt says, right under 'black hair dye.' He asked the nervous girl at the checkout counter how best to keep his roots dark.

She told him that's what the Internet is there for.

The Vagabond feels empty that night. He has never liked the hollow echoing, the dark and dust-filled blankness he falls into. He has never longed for normalcy more in his life. He brushes his thin, pale eyebrows with black, darkens them with the tiny bristles on the tiny brush while he holds up his small, cheap mirror with a shaky hand.

There is a delicacy in his movements. He resents the soft feeling of it and curses the broken mirror, the blank space on his bathroom wall and he snaps the brush like a toothpick. His eyebrows slant to a dangerous scowl, dark and thick and sharpened to a point. He grins at his reflection, a hollow smile to match his hollow mind. _The only things that match,_ he thinks. His eyes, one green and one blue, always crystalline and cold, stare back at him. He picks up the broken pieces of the tiny brush with the tiny bristles and he tapes them together with blue masking tape.

The Vagabond is a murderer. He finds pleasure in watching the warm, red blood seep out of his victims. He knows, he _knows_ that it isn't right but it makes him feel good, so fucking good when he picks out one of his seventeen different knives and he finds someone in the city who deserves to die. When he corners them like a predator and tears them to shreds. Nothing else matters then except the sharp metal in his hand and the muffled screams beneath his palm.

The Vagabond is a murderer. And he needs to hide.

One hundred and forty days after Ryan Haywood's death and forty nine days after the birth of the Vagabond, he purchases three tubes of child's face paint at a twenty-four hour dollar store. Red, white and black. He googles simple skull motifs and frowns his way through several clip art images and low rez gifs. His cheap second-hand laptop freezes twice before he finds one that's acceptable.

He applies the paint with his fingers, holding up his handheld mirror for the umpteenth time. He cakes his face with red, white and black. He is unrecognizable, nothing more than a scary face with seventeen knives. His hair is finally black and his eyes are green and blue.

Ryan Haywood is dead, but the Vagabond is so, so alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Outstanding illustration by [georgebenji!!](https://georgebenji.tumblr.com/) ❤❤❤
> 
> Don't forget to leave a comment! I absolutely love them and they inspire me to write more! ❤❤❤
> 
> Fond me on Tumblr @voiid-vagabond and on Instagram @voiid.vagabond where I post fic updates 👌🏼


End file.
